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History of Khudjand.

Historical monuments of Khudjand.

The city of Khodjent lies at the very entrance to the Ferghana valley and until quite recently in the history of Central Asia, the route further East into the territory of then Dzungarai and China, to the major stops along The Great Silk Road passed right through Khojent.
The city thus controlled the entire traffic and at the time used its prime location to its best advantage levying heavy taxes on the goods entering and leaving the valley. In modern times, a new road into the Ferghana Valley was blasted further north over the 2268m high Kamchik pass on the southern slopes of the Chatgal range.
It was Alexander the Great who originally laid the foundation of Alexandria Eskhate "Alexandria the Furthest" as he called his 9th city, in the IV century BC. Khojent thus marks the extent of his advances into Central Asia. In fact, Alexander did reach as far as Samarkand but his troops fell back again and Alexander decided to build a stronghold on the site of nowadays Khojent, strategically ideal both for defense and further conquest.
The city grew in importance after the onset of Islam. In the XIII century, it accountably put up the most spirited resistance the invading Mongols under Ginghis Khan. Much later, Khojent became the source of many territorial disputes between the Khanates of Kokand and Bukhara.
Eventually, the entire region was subsumed into the Russian Czarist Empire and Khojent became part greater Samarkand. In 1929, Leninabad, as it was called under the Soviets, was ceded to neighboring Tadjikistan by the Uzbek SSR so that the threshold of 1 Mio population could be reached there and the Tadjik autonomous republic proclaimed.
During the civil war in the 80' and 90' Khojent managed to escape most of the destruction shielded as it is by the Fan Mountains. There were even motions of independence at the height of the hostilities.
Khojent is the second largest city in the republic, an important economic center for the powerhouse of the Tajik economy, producing two thirds of the country's GDP with three quarters of the country's arable land.
Sights in the city include: the walls of the Xth century fortress, the oldest remains in the city; the bazaar; the mosque; Madrassah and the Mausoleum of Sheikh Muslikhiddin.

Photos From the Turkestan album, general Konstantin Petrovich fon-Kaufman created on the order a background (1818 - 1882), the Russian Turkestan first the general-governor, consists of four parts in six volumes. Composers of the Turkestan album the Russian orientalist Kun Alexander Lyudvigovich a background (1818 - 1882) by means of N.V. Bogaevckiy.